


it's my heart that pounds beneath my flesh

by sansbanshees



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Oral Sex, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, i'm not even sorry, ladder sex, what is plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-23
Updated: 2016-09-23
Packaged: 2018-08-16 21:46:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8118682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sansbanshees/pseuds/sansbanshees
Summary: In hindsight, she should have seen it coming. She is a Hawke, after all. And an Amell. Marian with Anders, her mother and her father—what is her family’s legacy, if not recklessness with their own hearts?





	

**Author's Note:**

> For a tumblr prompt: Cullen/? + ambivalent
> 
> Also:  
> This fic features a Bethany following the Circle path from DA2, so if freed Circle!Beth and Cullen is not your bag for the power imbalances in their history or any other reason, this is your warning. 
> 
> Also also:  
> It’s basically my dream to have had Bethany as a companion/Force Magic trainer for the Inquisitor, so that’s sort of her role in this verse.

There was a time, not long ago, when she thought she ought to hate him.

At the very least, she should be ambivalent.

She should be, but she isn’t.

There is no conflict. It is not in Bethany to harbor hate. Not when something softer might grow in its stead. And that, more than anything, is what surprises her now. This, _them_ , so hesitant and uncertain, a feeling she cannot yet bring herself to name unfurling layer by layer, the core of it too vulnerable to risk all at once even knowing what it is, what it’s been becoming since the day she came to Skyhold.

If she has been hesitant, it isn’t without cause.

If he does the same, it’s only because he knows what her reasons are. Why they exist. It’s his own doing and she hasn’t forgiven the wrongs, may never forgive them fully, but this, _them_ —this is his doing, too. And hers.

In hindsight, she should have seen it coming. She is a Hawke, after all. And an Amell. Marian with Anders, her mother and her father—what is her family’s legacy, if not recklessness with their own hearts? Falling for a templar—and it is falling, no other word will do, a rush of fear right beneath the elation of the brief moment that it feels like flying—is perhaps the most reckless, foolish thing she could ever do. He may not be a templar now, but he was once, and it matters. It will always matter.

But—she loves him. Within the safety of her own mind, she can admit it.

That matters too. Not enough to blind her, but it matters.

His hand fits well at her waist. The other feels as though it was made for the express purpose of cradling her face, broad and warm and curving perfectly around her cheek, tipping her back as his lips descend upon hers. And when he kisses her…

When he kisses her, she is never more certain of the fear he approaches her with, a terror that should be reserved for dragons.

“Stop,” she whispers against his mouth.

Cullen freezes. “I’m sorry—” He starts to pull away. “I’m sorry, I thought—”

“ _Stop_ ,” she says again, fingers curling around the edges of his chest plate to keep him from bolting. “Please stop. I wouldn’t, I would never—” _hurt you_ , she means to say, but he seems to have gotten there first, catching her meaning.

“Beth, no, it’s—it isn’t—” He closes his eyes, a deep furrow creasing his brow. “It’s not you, it’s never you, I don’t—”

“It’s not you, either.” She tips her brow forward to press at his. “You won’t. Not ever. I won’t let you.” It’s as much a promise as it is a threat. Her heart does not come at the expense of her sense, self-preservation or otherwise. And if this is to be, there will be truth between them. Always. Even if it hurts.

“ _Good_.” Of course he would approve of that. His smile is so small it scarcely exists at all, but she’s learned him well, sees him so plainly, hears all the things he doesn’t say in the little that he does. It can’t be healthy, some things _need_ to be spoken, but the admiration in his eyes when he opens them is enough to convince her that she’s read him right again. The heat in his eyes as he watches her watch him is enough to remind her that she isn’t alone in this. “Beth…”

She takes his hand and presses her lips to the gloved flat of his palm. “ _Touch_ me.” She doesn’t care if it makes her sound desperate. She was. Is. Has wanted this for longer than he might be comfortable hearing.

Not in the Gallows. Not ever there. Not even the ghost of an urge to know him this way came to her behind those walls. Not for him either, she thinks. That it rose for them both when she came to Skyhold will never cease to surprise her.

He cups the swell of her breast through her shirt, glancing down with wide eyes to watch himself in the act, as if he cannot quite believe that it’s happening.

Bethany makes a sound somewhere between a laugh and a moan. “I won’t break.”

He echoes the sound, but it’s tighter, verging on desperate. “I might.”

She drags him closer with both hands and crushes her lips to his, crushes her breast into his hand and moans when she feels him against her, hard and straining through his trousers. She tries to lower herself, to fall slowly to her knees so she can take him into her mouth, but he catches her by the elbows to stall her descent.

“ _No_ ,” he says, breathless. “No, I can’t, it’ll be over too soon.”

She nearly points out the inconsistency in that statement—men may not be good for six things, but there are two or three they can _try_ , at least—but then he’s backing her up, raising her hands by the wrists to curl her grip around the rungs of the ladder she suddenly feels at her back.

“Hold on to this.”

The order makes her shiver.

He tilts her chin upwards and kisses her once more, the press of his mouth so soft she barely feels it as he works the buttons of her coat free. He kisses her jaw, her throat, the thin fabric of the shirt at her chest that covers her from view as he sinks to his knees. His hands are clumsy with the laces of her trousers but just when she means to offer assistance, he _rips_ them, and she gasps as he tears them free, a rush of heat seething between her legs.

“Maker, _Cullen_ —”

He looks up, a flush creeping down from his cheeks to his neck, earnest, _hungry_ , unspeakably beautiful to her for the dichotomy he poses, confidence forever at odds with hesitation.

“ _Please_ ,” she breathes, fearful of shattering the moment with too loud a sound, too sudden a movement.

His face turns back down as he lifts her leg and tugs her boot free, first one and then the other. She can barely breathe when he peels her trousers and smalls down her thighs, baring the wet folds of her cunt to cold air.

“Maker…” There is a tremble in his voice, one that threatens to undo her before he so much as touches her where she desperately wants him to.

He reaches up and tugs off one glove with his teeth, his eyes glued to the joining of her thighs. The glove falls away from his mouth and he reaches up further, the tips of his bare fingers running over the dark curls between her legs, his breath catching when her hips jerk forward.

“Can I? Bethany, can I… I want—”

“ _Yes_ ,” she says, whimpers, her head falling back, held up only by a rung of the ladder she’s still holding onto.

He lifts her leg and drapes it over his shoulder as he leans in closer, and then he’s tasting her, the flat of his tongue dragging over her folds, too much and not enough, and she gasps, jerks at the contact.

He _moans_ , loud and lewd, the sound of it a bolt of heat spearing her low in the belly.

He draws away to give his hand a chance to feel her, one finger drawing down the seam of her, sinking into her with a quiet, wet sound, a groan bubbling out of his throat when she clenches down around him. He draws it out slowly, pushes back inside, a second finger joining the first, her slick shining on his knuckles where they butt up against her.

It’s an awkward position, one he struggles to hold, but he leans in again, fingers curling inside of her as he works his tongue between her folds and traces up to curl the tip of it around her clit. She bucks against him with a desperate sound, struggling to keep her hands on the rungs. She wants to touch him, wants to bury her fingers in the tamed curls of his hair and ruin the order he coaxes them into these days. She wants to utterly undo him, the way he is undoing her.

“ _Cullen_ …” Bethany hardly recognizes the sound of her own voice, as high and needy as its become.

He drags his fingers out of her with a growl and hefts her other thigh up on his shoulder. There is nothing hesitant in him now, nothing uncertain in the way he buries his face in her cunt, nothing restrained in the groan he lets out as he devours her, drinks her down as if she is the first stream of water he has seen in days. It’s all she can do not to fall apart at the onslaught, to hold fast to the rungs lest she topple them both when his tongue dips inside of her again and again, swirling up through the wetness she’s coated with to tease at her clit while he grunts and strains closer, squeezing her thighs with both hands.

The wave of heat inside of her is cresting so fast, she doesn’t know how to tell him, how to signal that she’s nearly done for and in the end, it happens too fast to even _try_. He sucks at her clit, circles it with his tongue, once, twice, and then she’s crying out, shaking above him, trying to keep her thighs from clenching too hard around his head as he laps her through it with with urgent whimpers and moans, as if he cannot have enough of her.

She’s still trembling when he rises, her toes skirting the ground as her legs fall from his shoulders, hands gripping the rung so tight her knuckles must be white. He’s still clothed, still _armored_ , the wool of his trousers scratching at her thighs when he presses close, the metal of his chest plate a cold that bites clean through the thin fabric of her shirt. He shoves his trousers down his hips and tilts his head to slant his mouth over hers, her own taste heavy on his tongue, smeared across his lips. She groans when she feels him against her, when he slicks his cock through her folds, searing himself in her heat again and again as his tongue pushes against hers.

Bethany lifts her leg and wraps it around his hip, the heel of her foot digging in to pull him closer. He sinks into her, his mouth falling open, a moan hitching in his throat when he bottoms out.

“Maker, _Beth_ —“

She makes a quiet sound of encouragement, rolling her hips against his in a bid for friction, hands still holding tight above her head, the fur of his coat tickling her nose when he buries his face into her neck and moves.

She couldn’t have known that it would come to this when she first met him, could never have known how utterly hers he would become so many years down the road, how utterly his she finds herself now, here, clinging to a ladder that leads up to a small room with a broken, crumbling roof. She can see the stars above her when her head falls back, flickering pinpricks of light against the vast blackness of the sky.

Isn’t that how this started? Just a pinprick of light, one she should have ignored but couldn’t, not when she might unearth the sun itself in pursuing it.

She’s burning up, full of heat that rises and rises, licks of flame at the tips of her fingers as he fucks into her with hard jerks of his hips, wood scorching beneath her touch but she doesn’t let go, doesn’t think to be embarrassed or apologize when he lifts his head and sees it, a wash of nervousness in his eyes that flares and dies within seconds.

He reaches down to take hold of her thigh with his still gloved hand, hauling her up and bearing down on her to pin her in place as her other leg lifts to curl around his hip. His bare hand reaches up, grips the same rung she’s holding onto for dear life, the muscles of her arms burning with effort, his fingers curling around the wood right next to hers.

He’s close. He’s so close. She can feel him shaking as he tries to hold it back, to make this last, but the rhythm of his thrusts is failing quickly, the slap of his skin against hers slick and erratic.

“ _Beth_ —“ His eyes shut tight as he tips his brow to press at hers, her name uttered as fervently as a prayer.

She ducks down, mouth pressing kisses hot and wet into the crook of his neck as his hips stutter and still between her thighs, a ragged sound tearing out of him as he spills into her.

For a long moment, they stay just as they are, cooling heat and panted breath, racing hearts pressed as close as they can be.

There is nothing ambivalent about it.


End file.
